Surprise ! - Airelle Besson - Vinyl LP Record (Arrives in 50 days)

some projects are the result of lengthy aesthetic ruminations, giving birth to highly concerted works that seal years of complicity, while others are born of pure chance, staking their necessity and the singularity of their purpose on the joyous epiphany of an unexpected encounter... Such is the case with this programmatically-titled album which, by bringing together French trumpeter Airelle Besson with two eminent figures on the young jazz scene in Germany, pianist Sebastian Sternal and drummer Jonas Burkwinkel, marks the official birth of a trio as unexpected as it is seductive, whose improbable orchestral formula, The unlikely, fortuitous and delightfully tightrope-walking orchestral formula, with its combined fragility and boldness, produces music full of charm and daring, distilling a lyricism of incredible freshness of inspiration through a kaleidoscope of refined forms that are continually renewed. - - It all began more than ten years ago, in September 2013, when double bassist Riccardo Del Fra, then head of the jazz department at the Paris Conservatoire, set up a Franco-German orchestra with Airelle Besson and Pierrick Pedron on one side, and Sebastian Sternal and Jonas Burkwinkel on the other, for a tour lasting several weeks in tribute to Chet Baker. The musicians immediately hit it off, and at the end of this series of concerts, Airelle, Sebastian and Jonas vowed not to leave it at that, and to each seek to extend in one form or another this contact, so rich in potential. The opportunity came just a few months later when, invited by the Münster Festival to perform with musicians of her choice as part of a carte blanche, Airelle proposed to the organisers the novel experience of this trio in the company of Sebastian and Jonas. The project was approved, a repertoire was quickly drawn up, skilfully mixing old compositions by each of the group's members, and after a short rehearsal organised just a few hours before the concert, the trio, without a net, threw themselves in front of the audience, driven simply by the sheer pleasure of being together and the desire to surprise themselves. Experimenting in situ and in vivo with the very particular orchestral dynamics and colours induced by this almost involuntary instrumentation, the group, with a spontaneous mixture of expressive jubilation and collective formal audacity, With a spontaneous blend of expressive jubilation and collective formal daring, the group delivered a performance so full of promise that what could have been no more than a fleeting prototype was transformed in the minds of each of the protagonists into a long-term joint project, which gradually developed and refined over the years and in concert after concert, without ever abandoning that original grace founded on the astonishment of the encounter. - - It is this particular alchemy between its members, which has been the very identity of the trio since its inception, that this first album, so beautifully named ‘Surprise! Through a repertoire that is essentially the same as that of the original concert (only the title theme ‘Surprise! ‘was composed afterwards, specifically for the band), Airelle on trumpet, in her own personal style, precise, sparing, uncluttered, constantly focused on the purity of the song;; Sebastian on piano(s) and Fender Rhodes, putting all the fluidity and discreet virtuosity of his playing at the service of the overall sound, with a sense of architecture and spatial organisation of remarkable clarity and precision;; and Jonas on drums, who gives the trio both its foundation and its pneuma, with an art of groove and punctuation of rare finesse - here, in prismatic fashion, a whole range of moods and forms of incredible richness and diversity. What's striking about this album is the extent to which the trio, without ever losing coherence or personality, escapes any sense of system - each track seeming a kind of prototype in which the group tests and experiments with the fragility induced by the double bass's vacant place at its heart, multiplying the ways of dealing with this structural imbalance in order to give shape and form ever differently to its most intimate song. With a clear taste for melody at the heart of its preoccupations (constantly magnified by the minimalist phrasing and the mellow sound of Airelle Besson's trumpet), the trio takes a variety of approaches, moving from lyrical pieces with elegiac or even melancholic tones to mischievous, cleverly deconstructive exercises in style. Surprise!’ favours short forms that are precisely designed and arranged with a real sense of dramaturgy based on the eloquence of understatement and the dynamics of space, and in many ways sounds very contemporary, like an album of songs. In this context that is both refined and deliberately tending towards a form of simplicity, Airelle Besson, Sebastian Sternal and Jonas Burkwinkel succeed in the challenge of constantly nourishing the group's sonic identity with their voices, without ever sacrificing any of their strong personalities. And that's not the least of the surprises on this masterful record!

Label: L'autre | Origin: Holland